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Dear Websites: If you're going to guilt me into turning off my adblocker don't assault me for doing it

spineduke

spineduke

Moderator
Oct 25, 2017
8,745
Stef said:
Websites get their revenue from that.

If you read their articles with ad blocks you are stealing.

That's plain and simple.

No need to discuss this, not even for cleaning someone's conscience.
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I guess using full view RSS is also "stealing" eh?

How much you want to bet that PC of yours is compromised because of a malicious ad?
 
borat

borat

Banned
Jan 2, 2018
534
not gaming but this was my experience trying to read an article on the Independent's website using my phone yesterday.

EFoqyhaXkAIMFII



I wonder why people use ad-blockers?
 
AlanOC91

AlanOC91

Owner of YGOPRODeck.com
Verified
Nov 5, 2017
960
riverfr0zen said:
Do you really need to spend ~€400/mo? I don't mean to criticize offhandedly -- as someone who works in infotech I'm very familiar with the concerns sites like yours have -- but I bring it up because increasingly I feel this is a question that needs to be addressed (by the industry in general) for content creators/providers such as yourself: How to efficiently distribute information without having to succumb to advertising.

For example Google claims its mission is to "organize the information of the world". I think that's a very important and useful mission, BUT, in trying to achieve it they are also simultaneously polluting the information sphere with their advertising schemes. Even they can't figure out how to operate without advertising, and it's very sad because the promise of information organization (and access to it) is affected.

Increasingly I feel advertising has no place in a world where information is sought on demand and without corruption. People shouldn't have their senses and cogitation assaulted when they are trying to access and process data for whatever reason. It is a vestige of a past era when information was broadcast as a "push" (e.g. via television), rather than the world we live in today where information is increasingly "pulled" or requested on demand.

Ads in this age are just friction, nothing else.

EDIT:

Ahem, anyway, getting back on point -- have you looked at your initial assumptions? E.g. needing a "dedicated server"? Can you not get by with some VMs on AWS and scale horizontally as needed, etc.? I don't bring it up to "show off" my tech prowess or anything, but just to highlight that considerations around these very elements may be what needs to be addressed by the larger web community to ensure people can distribute information without relying on an advertising infrastructure.
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Do I need to spend €400/month? No. Absolutely not.

I could cut back Cloudflare completely.
I could potentially cut back Google Cloud Storage completely.

But these are convenient and improve the overall user experience by having them both. What I didn't list in my OP are my writer payment costs. I spent quite a chunk of money paying my writers for content. These people also need and deserve to be paid for their work. Unfortunately site ads completely cover that along with all hosting costs.

While I completely agree about ads in general, the alternative simply isn't viable. We cater to a young to middle aged audience. This audience aren't likely to subscribe via Patron on top of other subscriptions/bills they have. We tested a donation system for 3 months. I think we generated €30 but maybe we needed to push a donation pop-up in peoples faces? Do you see where I am coming from? It's oft a lose-lose situation.

Honestly? Haven't looked into Amazon AWS at all. It's something I can potentially look into come 2020. At the moment, I'm hosting with a Company of my origin. This currently provides me a lot of benefits (offsite backups, instant customer support, etc etc) and I've been reluctant to change that.

I've also been thinking of trying Digital Ocean!

Regardless though, despite the server infrastructure, I will still have to pay my writers what they deserve. It's such a hard dilemma and I honestly believe there isn't a current worldwide solution that works.
 
Bog

Bog

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
2,428
I can't even tell you the last time I used a desktop web browser that wasn't for work.
 

Phoenix944

Member
Oct 28, 2017
925
I really want to support the site I use on a daily basis, but it's hard sometimes to be assaulted by these intrusive ads...

Even on resetera, on mobile, I often got redirected by an ad and could not leave. It happenned several times, never use the site again on mobile without a blocker.
 
asmith906

asmith906

Member
Oct 27, 2017
27,359
minimaxir said:
Oddly enough, the only websites I've seen that are aggressive about it are gaming websites. Other websites just allow you to close the popup and be on your way.

For a number of reasons, such aggression isn't a good strategy, namely because it'll cause a very high bounce rate, and Google does not like that.
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You must not visit many news sites. It can get awful. Especially with those autoplay videos that have nothing to do with the story you're viewing.
 
LumberPanda

LumberPanda

Member
Feb 3, 2019
6,327
Stef said:
Again: there is no need to discuss this.

Like "Look, I use adblock and I don't feel I'm stealing".

I'm even tired of writing this.

Here, have a good reading.

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I don't find Tom's Guide's arguments to be compelling. I'd say the arguments present in the article apply to listening to a guitar player on the subway and not putting money in their hat. That's not "stealing their music". Even if you stick around for 1 or 2 songs (so not just passively being forced to hear it). If they don't want people "stealing" their music they are free to play in a private venue, and Tom's Guide is free to make their website private.

At worst it's an asshole move. And it's fair to call it that. But that's not stealing.
 
Shadow of the Void

Shadow of the Void

Member
Feb 9, 2018
2,624
I started using an ad blocker not just because of the annoyance, but because ads on perfectly legitimate websites would occasionally have malware embedded in them. I was visiting GameFAQs a number of years ago to look up a walkthrough guide and my computer got hit by malware that was a pain in the ass to fix. After that, I discovered Ad Block Plus and that was it.

When websites ask me to turn off Ad Block, I just ignore them. If they outright demand that I disable it and block me from using the site at all until I do so, well, they can go to hell. I remember a relatively recent story about how Forbes started preventing visitors from using the site unless they disabled their ad blocker, and those that did, predictably, had their computers attacked by malware embedded in the ads. Yeah. And websites wonder why people block ads. They're annoying, intrusive, negatively impact the performance of our computers, and are sometimes just flat out malicious. At least with TV ads I don't have to worry about them causing my television to go on the fritz.
 
DrKelpo

DrKelpo

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,861
Germany
Yeah. Had a similar situation a couple of days ago.
I visited some gaming site and the usual "please disable" thing appeared. I visit the site now and then so okay, why not. Immediately after reloading I get a barrage of ads thrown at me.. So many my browser slows down and is barely usable.

This is why adblock exists and if that is the extend of ads you want to show me, don't be surprised if I block every single one of them.
 
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